“Damn straight,” he said.
Bliss rested her head against him. “Now if I can just win my case with the Department of Child Safety tomorrow…”
Connor kissed her hair. “You will. No,wewill.”
Bliss smiled. “Then my happily ever after will be complete.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Connor sat in the parking lot behind the courthouse, Bliss crying in his lap, as he did his best to control his rage.
The first day of Bliss’s hearing had been one clusterfuck after another. The only good thing had been that, since this was Darling, the judge agreed to let him take the witness stand first so he could sit next to his babygirl for the rest of that farce.
Every time he glanced down at her, curled up and small against him, his chest tightened. She looked fragile, like silk caught in a storm. His jaw clenched. He’d be having words with some of those so-called witnesses who testified today. No one disrespected his babygirl and walked away unscathed. Not ever.
The only one who had remained calm had been Raleigh. The man was unflappable. He questioned each witness who took the stand and did an excellent job of countering the picture Rochelle Talon and her minions had attempted to paint.
While Connor appreciated the calm and the strategy, nothing could extinguish the fire inside him. He had to sit there with his fists clenched, eager to protect her and to erase the lies that completely misrepresented everything his babygirl was to her children.
Their children, he corrected himself.
But even with all of Raleigh’s efforts, by the end of the day, DCS had depicted his girl as someone out of her depth who couldn't provide safe living conditions for the twins.
Ms. Talon had shown only the things she had found before he moved in with Bliss. She had made it sound like nothing had changed and implied that Bliss had neither the desire nor the ability to care for her children properly.
Bile rose in Connor’s throat. Each insinuation was a dagger aimed at his babygirl, and he’d been powerless to stop it in the courtroom.
Then Sandra Wainwright had taken the stand and cried… fucking cried… on the stand about how the children came to Bundles of Joy in dirty clothes, soiled diapers, hungry, with no bottles or snacks provided by Bliss. It was nothing but lies, but it was her word against Bliss’s since Sandra was the only worker in the room most of the time.
The most damning thing Talon had done was show pictures of Sadie with bruises on her legs and arms. They were clearly fake, but Raleigh hadn’t been able to get them thrown out. Connor wanted to storm up to that woman and rip her fucking head off.
He could feel his pulse drumming in his temples, a dangerous heat coursing through him. Rage was a living thing, trying to claw its way out, but he held it back. With clenched teeth, he reminded himself of the promise he made to protect, not destroy.
He had never wanted to hit a woman before. Not once. Until today.
He wouldn’t, of course. Not after the way he’d watched his dad beat the shit out of his mom on a regular basis. It was why he kept such tight control over himself and his emotions. Control was survival. And he needed it now more than ever because no one was allowed to treat his babygirl like that.
That was why he hadn’t trusted himself around Sadie, Sophie, and Nori. But he was nothing like his dad. He’d cut off both his arms before he’d hurt one of those girls. Connor’s hands gripped the cold steering wheel, but he could only feel the warmth radiating from Bliss in his lap. She was his world, his responsibility, his heart beating outside his chest.
He wanted to give them the best life he could, one filled with love and joy and peace. In fact, he’d been working on a surprise for Bliss over the past two weeks. He had planned to show it to her on Christmas Eve, but after the day she’d had, he decided to do it today.
The thought of her smile, soft and genuine, pushed a bolt of need through him that settled in his groin. He’d move mountains for that smile. He’d started working on her surprise in the living room of his house in Arcadian Hills. And maybe, just maybe, he’d started moving her heart along the way.
She hadn’t moved since he’d pulled her onto his lap. Even more startling, she hadn’t spoken. Yeah, this surprise was just what his babygirl needed. Carrying her to the passenger side, he put her in the seat and buckled her seatbelt.
Before he got back in the car, he called Reid and asked him to keep the girls for a few more hours. He needed some time alone with his babygirl, free from interruptions. He would put the world on pause so he could remind her who she belonged to.
Bliss stared out the window on the way back to her house, lost in her thoughts. Trying to think of anything he could do to make her feel better, he took her hand in his and brought it to his lips. “Try not to worry, babygirl.”
She didn’t take her eyes off the window. “I can worry if I want to.” She snapped at him in a tone of voice he’d never heard her use before.
It was like that, was it? That was okay. He knew exactly what his babygirl needed. She needed her Daddy to help her get rid of all the stress and emotions she had bottled up inside.
She’d been so brave today. He was proud of her. She’d stayed calm and still while all those people lied about her. She was no doubt sad, angry, and terrified. But she was stuffing all those feelings down, trying to be brave.
But that was his job now. Another part of his job was to give her a way to release all the pent-up anger and fear. He could feel the tension in her. The little tremor of contained emotion in her hands The sharp inhale as her body tried to hold itself together. He would dismantle all of that. Thoroughly.
Using his sternest Daddy voice, he put that plan into action. “I can’t make you not worry, little girl. But if you don’t change your tone, I can give you something new to worry about.”
